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Tilly Norwood is an actress that you may not have heard of, despite her being a willing and able actress who is now at the center of talks from multiple talent agents. Well, actually she isn’t an “actress” but an “AI-generated performer,” but the rest of it is correct. The hyperrealistic computer-generated creation is now on the verge of getting her own agent in Hollywood. Oh, weren’t those SAG-AFTRA strikes all worth it?
Created by actor-comedian and technologist Eline van der Velden and an offshoot of her company, Xicoia, Tilly Norwood is now apparently the subject of something akin to a movie distribution bidding war among agents. Van der Velden has been promoting Norwood as a “castable, directable, and available on demand actress” while calling her company an “AI talent studio” that will soon be able to create and manage digital stars for hire. In addition to this, Van der Velden and Verena Puhm, Luma AI’s Studio Dream Lab LA, declared that entertainment companies are “embracing AI under the radar” and high-profile announcements would be made to that effect in the near future. Van der Velden said at the Zurich Summit (via Deadline):
“We were in a lot of boardrooms around February time, and everyone was like, ‘No, this is nothing. It’s not going to happen’. Then, by May, people were like, ‘We need to do something with you guys.’ When we first launched Tilly, people were like, ‘What’s that?’, and now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months.”
Puhm added, “Historically, the studios have been very slow to adapt, at least publicly, they need that influx of new creatives, and new creative technologists to come in and actually show them how it’s done. You can assume that a lot of them are already working on it.”
If the AI-generated character – let’s accept it, that is what it amounts to – does manage to be signed up to an agency that is used to working with real human actors, then there is clearly going to be a whole new level of fallout over what this could mean for the future of the entertainment industry.
Particle6 ProductionsJust two years ago, Hollywood came to a standstill thanks, in part, to the concerns over AI’s evolution into a threat to livelihoods in the entertainment industry. Now, it looks like things could be worse than ever before, with Tilly Norwood stepping out of the shadow of being a one-off gimmick, to being a fully formed job-stealing AI actress, one that could turn out to be the first of an endless number of bespoke “actors” and “actresses” available to work in projects at a moment’s notice, and could not bring with them demands for intimacy coordinators, personal trailers, or increasingly high pay checks.
While this may not have been something that has been hitting the headlines until now, you can guarantee that if Tilly does acquire an agent, we will be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months. If you listen carefully, you can hear the picket lines materializing in anticipation.
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